Chicken Parm Manicotti and Sourdough Bread

Pan-breaded chicken cutlets seasoned with Italian spices and served with manicotti stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach, then covered in marinara and mozzarella. Served with a side tomato salad and freshly baked traditional sourdough bread.

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#chickenparmesan #stuffedmanicotti #italianrecipes

Everyone, Elsie Jensen here. Tonight we are going to bake up a loaf of our sourdough bread and we’re going to make some um stuffed manakotti with some Italian fried chicken. So, kind of like a chicken parm manakotti. So, kind of a happy blend of them together. So, let’s start by getting our sourdough, which kind of poofed a little bit over. Let’s pull this off. There we go. And then we’re going to flip it out and we’re going to bake it. Ah, you know, sometimes when I don’t divide the bread up as evenly as I think I’ve done, then one poofs over and one doesn’t. So, I have a second loaf in my fridge and it’s perfectly in its shell. And this one definitely had more in it, but they bake up just the same. Okay, pull off our little thing from our cheesecloth here. And this one’s going to be a big loaf. Um I hope he fits in there well. But we’re going to give him a nice big um expansion score. Here we go. And then again, we’ll just do our really simple kind of shape or wheat leaf on here. And then I’ll do one more cut in our expansion score. And then we’re going to drop this in our Dutch oven, which is nice and hot. But this guy is going to be a tight fit in here because he was really p bling out over ours. So, I’m going to try to slide him in here as best as possible. There we go. But he’ll poof up and he’ll take the shape of my Dutch oven. So, no worries. We’re going to put our lid on and then we’re going to bake this at 500 for 20 minutes with the lid on. That lid is going to help trap in that moisture and it’s going to prevent the bread from the crust from getting too brown. Then we will take the lid off and bake it for 20 minutes at 450. So I’m going to pop put my timer on. There we go. And now let’s start making our manakotti. We’ll drop our noodles in to boil. We’ll make our filling. Um, and that way it can go in when we turn the temperature down to 450. We can um put our manakotti in. You have a question. What’s your favorite holiday to cook for? Oh, I would have to say it would probably be our Christmas because I make I do the Swedish smorgish board or ule board which is this Swedish feast that has these all these traditional things that we always had growing up and it’s a little crazy because there’s certain rules about what food you can eat at what course. Um but it is one of my favorite things to do because I try to cook as much um like authentic food as possible. Okay, we’ve got our manakotti noodles here. And get scissors to open them up because I try to be as delicate with them as possible. Um, so they don’t break. But it looks like I have one broken noodle in here already. But we’re going to boil these for about 5 minutes. You don’t boil them too long because you want them to still be firm um so that you can stuff them easily. So, we’re going to pop these in our boiling water with some salt in there. Okay. And I’m going to even put my ones that have Well, that one’s pretty broken. If they’re cracked, they’re fine. But if they’re broken, it’s kind of hard to stuff it. There we go. Although, sometimes you get the manakotti that’s like wrapped up in all these different things and that gets a little bit crazy to unwrap. Okay, we’ve got our manakotti in here. We’re going to let that boil um for just a few more minutes. While we’re waiting, let’s work on making our um our filling for it. So, we’re going to start by adding in our There it is, our ricotta. So, we’re going to use a pound of ricotta. I like to use whole milk ricotta because I think that it just gives you a much better end product versus using like the low fat um on here. And I figured if you’re making manakotti, you’re not you’re not making a diet food, so might as well make it, right? Okay. So, we’ve got our whole pound of our um ricotta in there. And then we’re going to add in two cups of of mozzarella cheese. So, I’m going to use this whole bag is about two cups. We’re going to use it in here. And I like to also get whole milk mozzarella cheese whenever possible um because I think it just tastes a little better. So we’ve got our two cheeses in here. I like the mixture. You can also use parmesan cheese in there, but I’m going to be using some parmesan in my chicken breading as well as on the kind of final top bake. So I’m not going to be putting it in there. But we are going to put in some diced up or minced up spinach. So I’m going to take a handful of baby spinach here and we’re going to mince it up. My husband looks very sad about it, but I like to say he’s not going to notice it at all because it’s going to um kind of just cook away to nothing. Spinach is one of those great vegetables that really has no flavor um when you cook it up with other things. Isn’t that a great vegetable? It is a great vegetable. My husband and I have very different tastes in food. I I think we compliment each other well when we go to restaurants because he likes the meat and I like all the sides. The sides are where it’s at. I love it when you get those restaurants that where you can actually order like as a meal like 10 different sides and that just is my happy place. Okay, we’re going to chop these up nice and small because I don’t want to be eating a manakotti and I pull out a whole leaf. And this is about honestly by the time you get it chopped up it’s going to be like one cup but my aim is like two cups two loosely packed cups but the more you mince it the smaller and smaller it will pack down. Okay. So we’re going to add this into our mixture as well that you won’t even notice. And then we’re going to add in some pesto. Now, you could add in some minced up basil if you want to um to add a little bit more kind of a kick and a fresh, but pesto just adds a nice bit of flavor to it, which I feel like you need because otherwise I feel like there’s a lot of monotony between the ricotta and the parmesan or the mozzarella cheese. So, we’re going to add in a good like heaping spoonful. So, about a tablespoon or so of um pesto. You can add more if you want more pop and flavor, but I like to keep it pretty mellow for my kids. And then we’re going to add in some Italian seasoning. About I want to say a teaspoon and a half. Again, this just makes a really great flavor in here. And then just a little bit of garlic salt. You don’t need much because mozzarella cheese is going to add a bit of saltiness, but ricotta is pretty bland. So, we’re going to add in about a teaspoon. And then we’re going to mix this together. And then we’ll be ready to fish out those noodles here cuz it’s been about 5 minutes. Let’s give this a good mix. Now, the um spinach looks more poofy now, but as it cooks down, it shrinks in size. But here is our lovely kind of flavored up filling for it. It’s really basic and I know you can do so many different like you could sauté up a bunch of veggies and do it. Um, but this one’s just a really simple one. Looks like I got some chopped up spinach in my pan. Let me grab some tongs here and we’re going to just fish these guys out. I’m just going to first check them. Look, feel pretty good. You want them to be um somewhat soft but not um like super soft because they need to hold their form and the liquid in the ricotta is and in the sauce is going to continue to cook them. Now, they’re a little bit tricky to grab out, but I find it’s just easier to fish them out with tongs and to strain them and then bring them out. Here we go. And it’s like bobbing for apples in here. And a few more. And I will say one box. While you might not think it’s a lot of pasta, this will feed our family of seven. And we typically have enough to give my parents leftovers because they are very very filling. And then you put them, the kids will typically have the little ones will have about one, the older ones will have about two. But um you put them with the fried chicken. I’m making a tomato salad and some diced fruit and you’ve got a pretty um filling meal. Okay, I think I’ve got them all out, but I’m going to drain this just in case. Make sure. Yep, there we go. And we’re going to let these sit and cool for just a little bit um as we finish mixing up our base for this so that uh you don’t burn yourself. Oh, you know what? I forgot to grab out my piping bag. The easiest way to fill these up is with a piping bag. So, I’m going to grab my piping bag over here. If you don’t have a piping bag at home, use a gallon size Ziploc baggie and fill it up. But if you sometimes like to bake like I do, I have a stockpile of piping bags. I just have to get them out of my baking supply. This is going to make it so much easier to um put your filling inside your product. So, we’re going to get this. Let me grab a spoon and we’re going to scoop it into our bag. And that way, we can pipe it inside our shells here. Can you go over the filling, please? Yes. So, the filling, we have a pound of ricotta. I used whole milk. And then we’re going to add it. We added in two cups of mozzarella, about a tablespoon of um pesto, about a half a tablespoon of Italian seasoning, and um about two cups of diced up spinach, and about a teaspoon of garlic salt. So, we’re going to get our things puffed open. That way, we can fill this up nicely. This will give us a time for our ricotta to cool down or our noodles to cool down here. So again, if you don’t have a um piping bag, just fill it up uh ziplockc baggie and that way you can cut the tip off in the corners and it’s really easy to pipe it in there. That’s what I used to do when I was making like cupcakes all the time before I got piping bags because you can do just a really pretty um cupcake um with a simple kind of topping on it. Let’s make sure we get all this goodness in here. Now, if you wanted to add um I’m doing gonna do like an Italian fried chicken cutlet, you know, like a chicken parm to go with this, but if you wanted to skip that, you could sauté up some Italian sausage and you can add it in here as well to give a nice little, you know, meat base. Or there’s times where I also make a meatball to go in it. But here, there we go. So, we’ve got it in. And then just make sure you don’t cut your tip too um wide so that it can pipe in fairly easily. So, we’re just going to cut the bottom off or a piping bag, a ziploc baggie, you’ll just cut the bottom off as well. Now is the fun part. And I will say with this, you’re not just going to pipe all the way through with one side. You’re going to squeeze and then you’re going to fill it up on the other side. So just kind of like you’re doing almost like a canoli. Give this a good twist. Once I get pumping in, it gets a little bit easier. Here we go. And this will have a nice, again, this is full of like great cheese and so it’s nice and filling each one of these. And they do tend to expand a little bit more when we cook them in our sauce. Good thing I caught it. They’re slippery. There we go. And the and this is the reason why you don’t want to you cook your shells for only five minutes because not only are they going to soak up the extra liquid that’s inside the ricotta cheese, but if they’re too flimsy, they’re going to be um too hard to um fill up. You know what? We’re just going to cut it a smidge bigger. That mozzarella cheese is catching. There we go. much easier and fill it up. And I will say I have found that with the a pound of ricotta and a bag of mozzarella cheese should be enough for one box of manakotti. It seems to work well with the little extra, you know, the chopped up veggies in there. But if you’re unsure, what you should do is just partially fill and then go back over and top each one off so that you’re not having to try to scoop some out towards the end. Here we go. Got a big piece of cheese. And there we go. Imagine having to do a huge sheet tray of these. You have a question. Do you ever add an egg to the filling? You know, you can add an egg to it to keep the base to help hold it together, but I like it without the egg. Um, you know, it the egg does help it firm up a little bit more. Um, but I really like the kind of the slightly runnier texture of it. And with the adding the mozzarella in, it gives it a more of a meaty base to it as well. But I know, yes, you can definitely add in um egg. I just have always done it without and so I kind of just prefer it that way. Here we go. That one went all the way through. And then we’re going to be down. See, you know how I had to get rid of one shell because it had cracked up? There’s going to be like enough in here for about one more. So, I’ll just go over and top off all of those with that little bit of extra paste that we would have missed out on. Here we go. So, now I’m just going to again just top off any of these that are with this little bit of extra. There we go. And I find again I’m I seasoned up this because if you just keep it plain like ricotta without any flavor in it, it can be a little, you know, bland. It’s the same thing when I make my lasagna. I always add a little bit of pesto to the ricotta as well because, you know, when you get a bunch of it, it just gets to be too much. Adding this adds a whole another layer of flavor complexity. There we go. And I’m not one to waste anything. So, we’re going to fill this up. There we go. Okay. So, we’ve got these in here. Going to lay them out and try to lay them as flat as possible on here. This is a 9 by13 inch kind of cast iron baking dish, so it sits really well. wash a little off my hands. And then we’re going to pour our sauce over this. And we’re going to see I have several jars here. So, I’m going to use up some jars that I have. Just use your favorite marinara sauce. Now, you can also do a creambased sauce if you want to. I have marinara that I wanted to use up. And then I figured this is going to go well with the chicken parm kind of concept. So, we’re using this. But, we’re going to pour it over. I think I can get through my two partial jars and be enough. But you want to have a nice coating on it because this is going to also help the uh noodles absorb extra liquid. So, you’re going to get that kind of soften up from the ricotta as well as from the marinara. And then good with this. I had a giant jar of marinara and then this tiny one. This should be good. Okay. So, we’re just covering it over, making sure it kind of covers the whole bit of everything. So, all in all, that was probably about 40 oz of marinara. Give it a good shake around. There we go. Kind of fill up any of those gaps. Okay. What we’re going to do is we’re going to bake it for a little bit without the cheese on. Then when we’re do it in, we’re going to put the cheese on. You don’t want to put the cheese on for the whole 20 minutes that it’s in there. Um, with the temperature being so high because that cheese will burn. But we will with that sauce, it will protect it. So, what we’ll do is we’ll bake it for part and then we’ll take it off for the add the last bit on like the last 10 minutes. Okay, let’s get our chicken prepped um and get ready to fry this gum up. So, I have four chicken fillets that we’re going to cut or chicken breast that we’re going to cut in half, but I’m going to first trim off some fat that I see here because that will just be really chewy when we fry it up. Now, these chicken fillets or breasts are really, really fat, so we’re going to fillet them in half. That way, they will cook up a lot nicer. Um, and these are huge, so there really are like two servings in each one. So, we’re going to flay them in half. Try to cut against the grain. That’s going to give you a more tender chicken. If you want to, you can always pound your chicken out using, you know, a meat tenderizer. But I find filleting it in half gets me thin enough where I don’t need to pound it out anymore. Um, and cutting against the grain is going to make it nice and tender. Now, if I was using pork, like doing like a, you know, a fried pork tenderloin or a viner schnitle, then yes, I would pound it out because pork is a much tougher meat than chicken. Um, and that pounding makes it even more tender. But I find just kind of cutting against the grain here gives me a thinner thin enough piece that’s also nice and tender. And for those of you who don’t know what cutting against the grain is refers to in your chicken is when you cut your chicken open, you will see kind of this texture right here. And so if you’re cutting against it, you’re going to reveal a lot of that texture up. Those are like the tendons inside the chicken that you are um cutting up, which is going to make them more tender. So you’ll give you a shaggier look on your piece of meat. Um, but it’s going to make it more tender because you’re loosening up those fibers on there instead of keeping them firm. Here we go. And perfect. So, I’ve got my four chicken breasts into eight. Now, give my hands a quick wash because we’re going to have to go over to our sourdough here because it is just about ready for it to go off. Okay, dry my hands. We’re going to pop our manakotti in as well, again, without the cheese topping on it. And you can always, you don’t have to add a cheese topping on it if you don’t want to. Um, you can also keep it fairly plain here. Okay, we’re going to add this in because again I have about 20 seconds left on the timer here. So, we’ll pop this guy in. We’re going to take this one out. Let me clear this guy off before he beeps at me. And we’re going to take our lid off. And you can see our beautiful poof here. That’s why I said even though it was kind of flattened out um because it was a little big for this, I knew it was going to puff up well. So now we’re going to bake it for 20 minutes and we’re going to turn our temperature down to 450. So we baked it for 20 minutes with the lid on at 4 for 500. Now we’re going to do it with the lid on off at 450. And then let me set my timer. I’m going to set my timer for 10 minutes so that I will come back here, put cheese on the manakotti, and then we can add the additional 10 minutes so I don’t forget about it. But let’s get our chicken going and prepping here. So, let’s see. I’m going to slide this right out of the way. We’ll put this over here. We’re going to make We got to heat up our oil. We got to make our dredge and get this going. So, since we’ve got I my rule of thumb is for every chicken breast I use about one egg. So, since these were four full chicken breasts, I’m going to use four eggs. Um, and that’s for the kind of the for our dredging and the egg to kind of get it to hold on. We’re going to add about a cup and like almost two cups of flour here of allpurpose flour. Just a little shy. And then we’re going to make sure we season up this dredge well because we want this chicken to have a lot of great flavor. So, we’re going to add in about um two tablespoons of onion powder. It’s going to make a really lovely savory flavor to our mixture as well as I got to go wash that. As well as get a nice delicious um kind of golden color on it. Then we’re going to add in about a tablespoon and tablespoon and a half of Italian seasoning. A good amount to add nice kind of wonderful flavor to it. You know, mild, not too much. And then since I really love oregano, and I know they have it in Italian seasoning, but I love it. We’re going to add a little bit more. We’re going to add about another, you know, teaspoon and a half of dried oregano. And then our saltiness we’re going to get from some garlic salt here. We’re going to add about a tablespoon because we need to make sure we flavor all of this chicken up. And then we’re going to stir and mix that together. But I’m going to prep our panko. We’re going to add in seasoned panko breadrumbs and some Parmesan cheese to our mixture so that it will um have a nice little crunch to it. So, it’s kind of like a chicken parm, but we’ll be adding it to our sauce. Now, I always like to keep mine a little bit deconstructed because I find if you put your chicken parm in your marinara sauce and then do it, it gets a little soggy. So, I like to keep mine separate until we’re ready to serve it. Could you use cornmeal instead of flour? You could, but it would have a really gritty texture. I wouldn’t recommend cornmeal if you were trying to do a gluten-free option. Um, almond flour actually works fairly well to with it. Um, I would use that over it. Um, because it’s fairly mild. Okay, so we’re mixing in our spices here. There we go. And then just making sure I don’t have any pockets. They like to hide in my little edges of it. There we go. And then we’re going to whisk up our four eggs here. And then I’m going to before we start dredging, I’m going to start heating up our Wow, this egg did not want to break on me. Got one more egg. There we go. And then we’re going to whisk these together. We’re about to go hand in with these, so I’m not too worried about my fork getting some egg on it. So, just whisk it up. You want to make sure that none of your um egg yolks are separated from your whites or essentially make sure you don’t have any long stringy bits of egg white. Um because like I’m going to see like right here. you do it, then when you try to bread your chicken, that will hang on to it and you’ll get this really snotty, slimy part that won’t crisp up and it will just be a soggy part of chicken. So, just make sure you don’t have any long stringy egg whites in your mix. Okay, that should be pretty good. Rinse my hands real quick. Um, and we’re going to add our oil over here so we can start heating it up. Now, you don’t need to have so much oil that your chicken is submerged. You need to have a nice thin layer on here so that um it can fry on both sides. So, I have about a cup of oil in here. Um, and I’m using olive oil because we’re not going to heat so high that it’s going to smoke. We’re going to heat it at around like 350. But I’m going to heat it up on high until it gets a nice little like when I drop water in I get a sizzle. You have a question. Where’d you get those bowls? These bowls are from Target. Um they’re part I’ve had them for a very long time. They’re part of the Joanna Gains, you know, collection. They’re like a nice stone wear. Get to say I love her stuff. Um I think I got them oh two or three years ago. So it’s been a it’s been a hot minute for them. But I do love them. They’re They’ve got a nice heft to them. They’re a pasta bowl, but I rarely eat pasta in them. I use them for like I almost use them as like a prep bowl all the time. Here we go. I actually ended up having So, when I bought these, I think actually they’re even older. They’re like five years old. I only had three kids and I thought we were done. And so I just had like an eight set of my s, you know, my you like plates and bowls and whatnot because I was like, “Oh, that’ll be perfect. Five kids and when my parents are over that’s seven plus an extra spare.” Well, fast forward now, I have five kids and that means we’re seven and when my parents over that’s nine. And I was like, we do not have enough plates. So, I couldn’t find this same collection, but I actually ended up buying another one of her collections of plates um so that I would have enough of it. And so, now I have like this fun little mix and match between her stuff, which I love. Not that I don’t have like 20 other sets of plates throughout my house. I’m a little crazy. I’ve got Halloween plates and Christmas plates and just plain white plates. So many different setting wares that I never use, but I can never get rid of because I just love them. And one day, one day they will come in handy. I’m not as bad as my mother. My mother has a lot of place settings and there. Okay, we’re using your clean hand. We’re going to add in our panko over here. We need about a cup or so of panko seasoned panko breadrumbs. And then we’re going to add in a handful or so about grab a little bit more of our parmesan. Um you want about you know a half a cup in there. Then we’re going to mix it up. And then we can go our chicken into our egg and into it to get our second coating on because this is our first coating which is important for creating a binder to hold the egg on which will then hold our final crumb. Okay, let me first get a drop of water and check my oil because I feel like we might be getting close. Pretty close. So, I’m going to turn this down to a medium, right around five. And that way, we can go into our egg. And then I’ll pop my chicken right into the fryer for the first ones. Here we go. And we’re going to pat this down. so it holds on all of our lovely little crumb texture to it. There we go. And then we’re going to go Let’s get a little bit more on that. Straight into There we go. And we’ll let that start cooking up while we dredge and get our other cutlets to go in here. Now, it’s important. So, we heated up our oil to high, but once it was hot, I turned it down to a medium. And the reason is I want my oil slightly hotter than what I cook it in because when I add these chicken breasts in there, it’s going to cool the temperature of my oil down. And you want hot oil because if you don’t have hot oil, you’re going to have soggy chicken. And if you’re going to do the work to fry it, make sure it comes out right. There we go. So, we’re we’re frying it right over like a level five. So, a medium. I was hoping I could get four fillets in each one, but there’s no way I’m going to get four fillets in here. So, we’ll have to do three and three and then a lucky two. These are very long chicken breasts. Okay, we’ll pat this down and then we can get this last one in here. There we go. And I always just flip over and give it a really good pat down on both sides. It’s kind of a messy process, but it makes the best kind of fried chicken. And I will say fried chicken loosely, like fried Italian cutlets. Okay, I’m going to give Let’s see it. Yeah, I’m going to wash my hands because we are about to put some peas on our manakati. There we go. So, let me get this all scrubbed off. It’s kind of a messy process. Okay, we’re going to go to the oven. I’m going to bring my cheese over because we’ll just do it over there by our oven while this is frying up. I’m going to rotate that. And and I’m just doing mozzarella, but you could also throw on parmesan too if you want it, but we’re going to kind of leave our parmesan for a little bit part. Here’s a quick peek at our bread. It is looking gorgeous. Still toasting up. Let’s grab our manacotti out, but it’s nice and warm. You can see we’ve got a nice little bubble on it. I hear you. Okay. And we’re going to sprinkle our cheese over it. That way you’re going to get this lovely kind of cheese crust on it. And this will only need and just the second package. So about two cups over for using this size. This is about a 9 by13. You don’t need to have a super thick layer of it because this will melt and spread out. but a nice layer to get good cheese melt on it. And then we’ll pop this back in the oven. There we go. And then I’m going to set my timer for 10 minutes. There we go. Okay, let’s get our Got it. Let’s see. Making sure I’m going to rotate a little bit. I’ll know when these are ready to flip when our side is nice and golden. But while we’re waiting for that, let’s get our salad, our tomato salad kind of prepped up here. Using some tomatoes from my garden. They’re finally coming in. Um I had green tomatoes sitting on my uh my tomato plants for months and now we’re finally getting some. You know, better late than never. I did make fried green tomatoes because we had so many of them. But we’ve got some lovely heirloom tomatoes here, which are these kind of reddish greenish purplish ones, which are really delicious. And then, of course, some good old uh yellow heirloom. Again, whenever I plant stuff out in the garden, I always go for the weirdest, bougiest like versions of it. And this year I had planted purple bell peppers. None of them were purple. I planted six pel no eight bell pepper plants and I did not get a single purple bell pepper. So I was bamboozled. Okay, we’re just going to cut these into nice little chunks here. This is going to be my daughter Eve’s like happy place. She loves tomatoes. I love tomatoes. And I think that’s where she got them from is cuz she used to always steal my tomatoes out of my salad. Um, and so I think she picked up her love for them from me. And so she’ll be very happy with this. We’re keeping it really simple, too. We’re we’re just going to add a little bit of red onion and some fresh basil, a little drizzle of olive oil, and a little sprinkle of salt. Keeping it simple, letting the tomato shine. Okay, let’s check our chicken over here. I’m going to grab a spatula. I’m starting to see and some tongs some Here’s my tongs. Some nice kind of golden colors forming. Beautiful. I’m actually going to let it cook a little bit longer. I’ve still got a pretty pale color right there, so I want it to cook a little bit more. But let me check. This is the first one I put in. This one we’re going to kind of rotate them and we’ll let them do it and then I’ll know they’re ready in just a second. Here we go. Let’s check this one. Yeah, we’ll give them a little rotate cuz they’re cooking a little hotter all in the middle. There we go. You should be ready to flip in about a minute or two. I always know you’re going to look for them and you’re going to want to put them a little bit paler than your final product because when they sit, they actually get a little bit darker after they’ve cooled. Okay, let’s add in um some red onions here. So, I will say I keep one red onion and it will last me forever um because red onions are not very great for cooking like with heat with. So, they are much better raw and dips and stuff like that than they are if you sauté them up. When you, you know, cook up a red onion, they lose a lot of its flavor. Um, and so they’re they’re best enjoyed in their raw form. We’ll sprinkle these a little bit around. And then we’re going to throw in some fresh basil. And then a little olive oil and salt. Yeah. Question. How were the bagels? Oh, they were delicious. My kids were so happy when they my older two when they got home from school because they get home a little bit after we get done and they were very excited to come home to I like to say their second lunch. Um but for bagels because they all love bagels and I I don’t make them nearly as much as I should, but they were all very very happy. Torren’s favorite are is the cinnamon crunch ones. Um, and then Lena’s favorite is the everything bagel. And I will say when Jack woke up, when Teddy got home from school, he had cinnamon crunch because he loves that as well. Um, and Jack, he he took a pumpkin seed one and proceeded to pull all of the pumpkin seeds off. Um, and had a lot of fun with that. And then he ate the inside of it. not the crust or the things, but he literally picked out the inside of the bagel, which there’s good old Jackie. We have a question. How do you store the red onion between you two? So, I keep it in my veggie drawer in um so I wrap it up in a paper towel so it doesn’t get any moisture to it. And then just in my veggie drawer um you know where you have less um humidity added to it. Okay, let’s go check on our chicken here. We’re starting. I can see we’re getting nice kind of golden colors to it. Beautiful. So, here’s that nice golden brown. Now, any of those darker bits that you see, that’s the cheese crisping up. It gets a little bit darker than the rest of it, but look how beautiful this is. Okay. And then we’re going to go and I’ve got my fresh basil on here. We’re going to sprinkle a little bit of salt, just plain salt. And then we’re going to drizzle a little bit of olive oil on here. There we go. So, we’ll have a lovely tomato salad with this. Let’s get our second. We’re going to finish up. Let me check my timer on here before I get my hands all dirty. And turn this down a smidge now that my oil’s nice and hot. We’re going to get some paper towels to line our thing here so we can remove. I will say every chicken cooks a little bit faster after the first one. Um then everything is fully um heated up. Here we go. Let’s break these in half. Now, I put my chicken when it’s done on paper towels just like you would bacon. It absorbs the extra fat and it allows it to get nice and crispy instead of soggy. Okay, let’s get the rest of this chicken breaded. That way, we’re ready to pop it in for our next round. So, into our egg wash and into our mixture here. And we’re going to pat it up. Again, we have Italian seasoning, oregano, garlic, salt, parmesan cheese, panko breadrumbs, um, and flour in our breading. So, it has this lovely flavor. And onion powder. Don’t forget the onion powder. That gives it that nice golden color to it. Um, because the natural sugar in the onion powder kind of caramelizes when you fry it. There we go. Turn it down just a smidge. And again, the key with frying up your chicken is to go on a lower temperature versus a higher one. When you cook it on too high of a temperature, what happens is you’re going to get a dark brown crust before your insides are cooked all the way through. So, go low and slow so that your chicken cooks all the way through. And um and that way you don’t burn your crust either. There we go. Okay, let’s see what this chicken is looking like. Beautiful. Look at this. Nice golden brown. You’re going to put it on your paper towel, the oil side down, so it doesn’t get soggy. I’ll let that one cook a little bit longer. And that one is looking good. So again, oil side down. But again, I want it to get a nice kind of dark brown kind of coloring to it. Let’s see. Looking good. Beautiful. Okay, we’re going to put our next round of our chicken in. Here we go. and slide that in there. Okay, I’m going to dredge these last two. That way, they’ll be ready for when we do round three of our frying. Although, I might do that one after because we’re going to be pretty much ready with the rest of our dinner here in just a second. That’s the thing is we’re always cooking for a large family. So, whenever I do any frying of anything, I’ve got to fry a lot more than the average family of four or five um on here. Luckily, it’s not like at Thanksgiving where I don’t do fried chicken at Thanksgiving for anyone because that would be frying up like 40 or 50 pieces of chicken. You have a question. Do you have a menu for every night of the week that you post or do you go live and it’s a surprise? Uh the latter of the two, I go live and it’s a surprise. You know, earlier today I thought I was doing chicken wings for dinner and then I decided, nah, I wanted to do this instead. Um I do not menu plan, even though I probably should. Um probably for my own sanity. I instead am an ingredient person. So, I buy lots of ingredients and then buy what’s on sale, what’s in season, and then I figure out what I’m making from there. But as long as you stock your house full of basic ingredients, then you should be able to do cook most anything. Okay, slide this out of the way since we’re about ready to bring our sourdough and our manakotti out. Okay, beautiful. Okay, get our sourdough. We’re going to pop this. I’m going to grab my trivet right here. And then I’ll grab my Once we get it out. When I cook my man or my sourdough, this Dutch oven stays very, very hot. So, it’s really important to take it out right after you’re cooking so it doesn’t continue to cook the bottom of your bread. That way, you get a nice perfect golden brown loaf. Put a little of that basil away. We’ve got our nice expansion floor and our beautiful wheat leaf and our nice kind of it makes the shape of our Dutch oven here because it was a big one. But again, it’s going to be delicious. Now, with sourdough bread, if you’re new to making it, you cannot cut it as soon as you take it out of the oven. It needs to sit for about oh, I would say 10 to 20 minutes. Put this down right here. Let me grab my manakotti. Because if you cut it too soon, it’s doughy inside and it’s not good. It got it has to steam. Okay, let me grab this manakati with its delicious cheese and ooey and gooey deliciousness here and see how much we melted after 10 minutes on there. If we had left that cheese on there for the whole time under that high heat, it would get burned. Question is, is the recipe for the sourdough bread posted anymore? I do have the sourdough bread I have that recipe card available for everybody. Um, so everybody can make that. Um, as well as some tutorial videos on how you can make your own sourdough starter and um, your very first loaf. Because if you’ve never made sourdough before, you cannot just simply wake up one day and say, “I’m going to make sourdough bread today.” It’s a process and it takes about a week of fermenting your flour to get your starter active enough to make your loaf of bread. But it is not a hard journey. It’s really easy. It just takes a bit of time. And then you’re it’s the main difference between a yeast bread and a sourdough is there’s a lot more proofing time needed. With a yeast bread, it’s only about two to three hours that you need to proof. With a sourdough bread, you have two stages. You have your proofing on the counter and your proofing in the fridge, which gives you a better spring um when you’re cooking up. So, it takes about 24 hours for a sourdough bread, but you can keep it proofing in your fridge for as up to like 3 days. So, it’s one of those things where I make two loaves at a time. I have another loaf proofing in my fridge that I then can cook up tomorrow or the next day. Okay, since we actually are pretty much done with our first batch of everything, I might serve up our first layer because I’m not necessarily going to keep you guys on as we sit and fry through remaining part. These need to cook a little bit longer. They’ve kind of got a pale color onto them. And again, I want them to be a nice um golden brown that we have over there. So, we’ll let them sit for a second. That one actually looks it’s about ready. And we’ll get this one. So, these two How do you know when the chicken is done? So, I cook mine over a lower heat. And so, when my my crust gets to this kind of golden brown color, then it is cooked through. So, I do it by visual because I’m not frying over such a high heat. And that’s why I always recommend fry your stuff over medium to medium low. So, this is frying on a four. That way, by the time your crust gets to the right color, it will be cooked all the way through. If you leave your chicken really, really thick, that’s going to take a much longer frying time, and you’re going to need a lot more oil in there. So, I always fillet them in half as well. That reduces the time um for cooking. Okay, let’s get our dinner served up here. Let me grab slide this over here. Get my salad. And let me grab I need to grab a plate. I get this to be my serving platter. Making sure not to touch I have a tendency of when I take things out of the oven, I forget that they’re hot and I’ll grab them. And while my hands can withstand a lot of heat and that is very hot. Okay. So, let me grab for manati. I’m going to use my little shovel. Let me grab tongs for the chicken. And we can have a spoon for our tomato salad. Okay. Doesn’t want to agree with me there. Okay. Let’s get ready to serve up here. Grab my things. So, we’re going to start with our manakotti. I’m going to scoop out. Try to get two noodles here with our nice kind of pull on it. Look at that beautiful delicious cheese pull. So, this is our manakati that we stuffed with ricotta and um mozzarella cheese, spinach. Here’s you can actually see the inside of it, but you have some pesto flavorings in there as well, Italian seasoning, spices, and then we’ve covered it in a lovely marinara sauce. We’re going to serve this with our Italian fried chicken, which has Italian seasoning, oregano, garlic, salt, onion powder, which will kind of give you this chicken parm with manakotti all together. And then, of course, we’re going to serve it up with our fresh tomato salad um from tomatoes from my garden that we drizzled with a little bit of olive oil, fresh basil, red onions, and a little bit of salt. And then of course we will serve it up with a lovely slice of our sourdough bread. Again, has to cool before we can cut into it, otherwise it’s a bit gummy. Well guys, thank you so much for joining us here today. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. I try to do live cooking shows every single day, kind of show you what we’re making for our family, and hopefully teach you guys something along the way. Again, we do upload all of our videos to the link on our page. So, if you ever want to recreate any of these recipes at home, you can just go to that link and search for what we made. So, we’ve got our chicken parm manakati and you can always watch and cook along with me again. We also have a link to our Amazon storefront that has all of our different cooking gear and gadgets. I’ve got my Hexclad pans. I’ve got my Nordicware baking sheets, my spatulas, knives, all the different gadgets I use in the kitchen I have in there for you guys to check out. But again, thank you so much for joining us here. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.